


(You Give Me) Fever

by speccygeekgrrl



Series: MST3K Alternate Universes [12]
Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Bioterrorism, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kinga feels a feel, Medical Inaccuracies, Mirror Universe, Protective Siblings, everything I know about retrovirals I learned from an episode of Chuck, poor Jonah, the Mads aren't bad, why do I keep writing weird medical shit for this fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 01:37:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11933604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: In the not-too-distant future, up on the moon, Dr. Kinga Forrester is trying to cure a bioweapon that could obliterate civilization as we know it. Things get even more complicated when the terrorist who infected himself with it wakes up... not himself, but in a good way. As the clock ticks down, Kinga realizes that she's fighting for more than just a cure.





	(You Give Me) Fever

**Author's Note:**

> I set up this challenge because I wanted an excuse to write my mirrorverse headcanons while also encouraging other people to write theirs, so... I hope this works and everyone's having fun!
> 
> I've had this headcanon for a while without it being congruent to the mirror universe we're shown in Last of the Wild Horses, but after reviewing this episode I've tried to make it at least a little closer to what canon might have been. 
> 
> The fandom seems to be generally in favor of changing G's name without a consensus what to, so for my purposes I'm calling her Gypsum from now on. I hope this doesn't read obtrusively.
> 
> I really enjoyed writing Kinga and Max as good people. I mean, I love them as villains, but this was a lot of fun to explore. I'm a sucker for a good AU (both good in terms of quality and character alignment) but I couldn't bring myself to write evil Jonah because he's just too pure and good. This definitely got out of hand (8500 words in 27 hours WHAT THE FUCK AM I ON) but I like where it went!

The Satellite of Love was more than just an old horror story their dads used to scare them. What had happened to Clay and Frank was well documented, and Kinga and Max were just glad their dads had managed to escape because otherwise... well, they wouldn't exist. But they did exist, and they were determined to make the most of their lives, doing as much good as they could with the time they were given.

When, in the course of her career with the CDC, Kinga found it necessary to isolate a terrorist who'd infected himself with a bioweapon, she thought it might redeem the misery that had taken place on the SOL to use it as a practically impenetrable quarantine facility. Curing what could have killed millions of people in the very structure where her father had been tortured... that would definitely bring honor to the Forrester name. She could do worse than becoming famous for saving the world.

The threat was so dangerous that the CDC sent her, Max, and their entire lab's worth of staff (fondly nicknamed "boneheads") to the Moon to make absolutely sure that this bioweapon wouldn't spread past the unhinged Gizmonics villain who'd sought to spread the virus. Kinga was almost certain that she could synthesize a retroviral serum from the blood of the potential terrorist, but he couldn't be adequately contained in a facility where he could come into contact with other people.

After their return to Earth, Clay had recreated the bots who had been involved in his captivity, thinking that maybe making non-evil versions of them would help process the trauma faster. It didn't work the way he thought it would, but Kinga adopted the bots while she was earning her medical degrees, and they actually made fairly good nurses-- and they were immune to everything. They were all the crew she could send to the SOL with their quarantined subject.

The man they were trying to cure didn't look like a terrorist. He looked like a college kid, honestly, messy hair and a week's worth of stubble and and surprisingly soulful brown eyes behind thick-rimmed glasses. That he'd been radicalized during his matriculation at Gizmonic Institute wasn't that surprising-- Gizmonics had a tendency to churn out a couple of mid-tier-to-supervillains every graduating class, but this guy hadn't even graduated yet. His name was Jonah Heston and he was a bastard coated bastard with bastard filling, as little as he looked the part.

The CDC had picked him up barely days after he'd injected himself. They all hoped they'd snagged him before he became infectious, but no one knew for sure, nor did they know when symptoms would start presenting. Kinga had no idea how long she had to find the cure before the Satellite of Love became a floating graveyard-- a month? six months? a year? it couldn't be more than a year. She was pretty sure she could manage. Max was even more sure of her abilities, but she couldn't do it without him and their whole lab staff supporting her.

They'd been working at it for just over three months when a solar storm swept through and everything got... a little weird all at once. The worst of the storm happened overnight, and almost everyone in the Moon facility had strange and disturbing dreams. Kinga's really unsettled her-- the thought of being a supervillain left a bad taste in her mouth, and using the SOL to torture an innocent person just struck her as completely wrong, a return to the hideousness it had originally been used for. Max looked at her oddly when they met for breakfast.

"What's eating you?"

"I had a dream that we weren't related and you absolutely hated me," he said, and she snorted.

"Oh, come on. How could we not be related?"

"I don't know, it didn't explain that, but you treated me like total garbage and I was devoted to you."

"Sounds sketchy as fuck," she said. "My dream was weird too. We were evil and torturing Jonah instead of trying to cure him."

"Yeah, that was part of my dream too," Max said, brow furrowing. "And Jonah wasn't a douche so I felt bad about it."

"That's really bizarre," Kinga said, but the topic of conversation quickly switched over to the faulty centrifuge that had ruined yesterday's work and how far back they'd need to retrace their work to get back up to speed. "Shouldn't be too bad," she concluded as she set down her empty coffee mug. "Maybe two days' loss. Let's see what the bots have to tell us, anyways."

They usually checked in on Jonah twice a day unless something was weird, so when they called up to the SOL around 10 am it was totally standard. When Jonah answered, he looked... different somehow. Confused. Vulnerable, instead of belligerent like usual. The bots hovered around him uncertainly, but Kinga only had eyes for her patient.

"What are you _wearing_?" he asked Kinga. She looked down at her green lab coat and frowned at him.

"What do you mean? I always wear this."

"No you don't... you usually wear black."

"She never wears black," Max interjected, and Jonah pointed at him.

"You wear black too." Max pulled at the lapel of his white lab coat and shot a sideways glance at Kinga, whose frown had deepened.

"I don't, though," he said.

"Yes, you do," Jonah insisted. Kinga shook her head.

"It sounds like you're becoming very confused, Jonah. I'm going to have the bots run an additional test panel with today's samples, the virus might be progressing."

"Virus? What virus? What are you-- did you _infect_ me with something?" Jonah looked absolutely horrified. Next to him, Crow rolled his eyes and leaned forward slightly.

"Dr. Forrester, he's been like this since he woke up. He insists that everything is different, he has no accurate memories of being here."

"Gypsum, if you could be so kind as to run an electroencephalogram..." The big purple bot nodded and then caught Jonah's head in her mouth, pulling a yelp of terror out of the man. "Calm down, Jonah, this has to be the tenth time she's done this, there's nothing to worry about."

"Nothing to worry about?" His voice was muffled until Gypsum released him, leaving him wide-eyed and rumpled. " _Nothing to worry about_? What the _hell_ is going on here?" Gypsum looped a coil of herself around Jonah's arm to take his blood pressure, which Kinga could already tell was going to be result-spoilingly high. "Are you _experimenting_ on me?"

"Do you not remember why you're here?" Max asked curiously.

"Yes, I _know_ you're experimenting on me, but this is different than before," Jonah said. "What happened to bad movies? What's with the medical getup? Why are the bots listening to you?" Kinga and Max shared a significant glance, and Max shrugged.

"Sounds like what happened to our dads," he murmured, and Kinga nodded. "How could he know about that?"

"He couldn't," she said. "Jonah... what do you remember?"

"I was flying back to Gizmonics with a cargo load of meteors, I answered a distress call from your moon base, and then you lunatics kidnapped me and shot me up here to try and drive me insane," Jonah said, and then he paused to cough harshly into his fist. Kinga's eyes widened. "But now the bots are acting like medics, and I feel awful, and you guys are... is this just another way to make me crazy? Are you making me doubt my own memories?"

"One second," Kinga said, and pulled Max away from the camera to give him an alarmed look. "Check the EEG against the last one. Vitals are probably a mess right now but something's gone wrong with him and we need to know what. Is insanity a progression of the virus?"

"Kinga, what he said... sounds like the dream I had last night," Max said, looking bewildered. "Maybe something is going on here?"

"We need data," she said. "Before we start theorizing, we need data." Max nodded and went to run the analysis she'd requested, and she stepped back into view of the camera, trying to look encouraging. "Okay, Jonah. It sounds like you might be having some memory issues. Can you describe how you feel physically?"

"Achy," he said. "All my joints ache. Everything feels too bright. And-- Ow!" He yelped when Crow stuck his arm with a needle and started drawing blood. "Oh, ow. This is undignified, since when do you violate my bodily integrity?"

"Chill out, we do this every day," Crow said, golden hands perfectly steady as he filled three vials with Jonah's blood and then withdrew the needle, pushing a piece of gauze to the puncture. "There, hold that."

"We didn't kidnap you," Kinga said, and his lip curled in disbelief. "You're a failed bio-terrorist being kept in quarantine. We're trying to cure you. Well, we're trying to cure the virus in case it spread past you. But the long incubation period means we don't know how long it'll take to show if you did manage to spread it before we caught you."

"I'm-- no I'm not," he said helplessly. "I'm a scientist, damn it! I'd never hurt anyone."

"Those are not inherently related ideas," she pointed out. "I'm a doctor and I can't even make that claim. But I don't hurt people for the sake of hurting them. Sometimes the cure feels worse than the disease, but it's necessary." Jonah's face fell, and he looked so lost and desperate that Kinga wished she could hug him and tell him he'd be fine. Usually he was such a jerk that her warmer nature never needed a chance to shine through, but he seemed genuinely distressed in a way she'd never seen in him before. "Look... I'm going to help you," she said gently. "I really think I can save you. I'm going to do my damnedest to keep you alive. But you have to trust me."

"I don't think I can do that," he said. "You're... you're acting really strange and I don't know what's--" He cut himself off with a few seconds of coughing, face flushing as he struggled for a deep breath. "Whatever's going on, whatever this is-- it's like a bad dream," he said. "Like the only way you'd ever be nice to me is if I was dying. But even that's not believable."

"You seem to think I'm some sort of monster," she said.

"You take pride in being a monster," he shot back, and she shook her head.

"Uh, Kinga? You're going to want to look at this," Max said. He stepped aside to let her see the computer monitor, and the EEG results side-by-side. "This is last week... and this is today." They might have been different people, they were so dissimilar. Kinga chewed on her lip thoughtfully and shook her head.

"Okay, Jonah. Or whoever you are."

"I'm Jonah," he said. "Jonah Heston. Gizmonics employee."

"Gizmonics is a breeding ground for science-based villainy," she said, and he shrugged.

"The protagonist class isn't like that."

"Protagonist class? Gizmonics abandoned that track... jeez, it must have been 40 years ago, my dad was one of the last to graduate like that."

"1979," Max chimed in. "It was dismantled under Carter."

"Right, thank you. And even despite that he still ended up being kidnapped as a test subject."

"That's what you did to me," Jonah said. "You sent me up to the Satellite of Love with these bots, except they weren't as..." he trailed off uncertainly.

"Weren't as what?" Tom asked. Gypsum loomed over Jonah's shoulder and Jonah gulped.

"Weren't as medically proficient?"

"That's a good point... bots, what do you think the problem is?"

"No clue," Crow said. "I'd say he got hit on the head, but I know he hasn't."

"Delirium?" Tom suggested. “His temperature is elevated. Maybe his brain is cooking.”

"There was an unusual amount of solar radiation overnight," Gypsum said. "It reset a few systems on board the SOL. I had my coils full keeping everything running. But ion storms have weird effects sometimes."

"An ion storm," Kinga repeated, looking wide-eyed at Max. A dawning look of comprehension broke on his face, and he turned back to the computer without saying a word, frantically typing. "So this is... what... a Jonah from an alternate universe?"

"That actually makes sense," Jonah said. "Because there's no other explanation that makes any sense at all." He coughed again, leaning against the table when he staggered slightly. Gypsum pushed a chair underneath him, and he sat down heavily. "So... I'm a terrorist in this universe? That's uncharacteristic."

"Well, your crazy manifesto went off about overpopulation for a few pages. But let's be real, a deadly plague is not the way to solve that problem."

"Yeah, no, of course not."

"You're much more reasonable than the Jonah we're used to," she said. "Cause in this universe, you're a complete asshole."

"That's not me," Jonah said. He propped his head on his hands and closed his eyes, sighing deeply. "So... am I dying?"

"Slowly," she said, feeling like honesty was better. "The coughing is worrisome, but this is the first sign of it, you were-- he was? Fine yesterday. The viral load is building in your bloodstream, which is bad for you, but you're producing antibodies for it, which is good for everyone else."

"Great," he said, in a not-great tone of voice. "So some jackass version of me is wreaking havoc back in my universe while I'm stuck here in his bioweapon-filled body. Wonderful."

"I'm a doctor, not a theoretical physicist," she said. "I don't know what to do about the universe thing."

"The sun is very active right now," Gypsum said. "The solar storms will continue for a day or two. Maybe it'll straighten itself out."

"Uh, actually... I think this was triggered from my universe," Jonah said. "Because you-- uh, the Mads-- sent up an experimental matter transference device. Some sort of teleporter?"

"Neat," Kinga said.

"Not neat," Jonah said. "They told me it was coming, but they sent it up in a supplies shipment while I was asleep, and this is where I woke up."

"Not neat," Max agreed, and he waved Kinga over to his computer. "So here's the chart of the solar radiation from the past 24 hours... see that spike right there?"

"Uh-huh."

"Right after 6 am."

"I guess evil me is a morning person," she said dryly.

"Actually, if anything happened on Moon 13 that early, that's Max," Jonah interjected.

"Some things are constant. Like your four-snooze-button morning routine," Max joked. "Okay, so evil us sent a teleporter up to the SOL, and you woke up in a different reality. But still the other you's body, it's just your mind in his body."

"Seems to be that way."

"So maybe if evil you sends it back down, the process will reverse," Max said.

"I wouldn't count on it," Kinga said. "Evil Jonah is a total dick. A healthy body and an unsuspecting universe to run rampant in? He's not coming back."

"Uh, he won't be running rampant anywhere," Jonah said. "Cause I was stuck on the SOL against my will. So unless evil me and evil you make an evil pact..."

"Well, how about good you and good us agree to work together," Max suggested. "Even if we're not the ones in control of the universe swapping, at least we can get something done while we have a cooperative patient instead of a reticent one."

"Yeah, sure, just tell me what to do," Jonah said. "I'm a scientist, I'm good in a lab. Give me _something_ to do to feel like my life is even marginally under my own control."

"Crow? Tom? Gypsum?" The three bots looked at Kinga expectantly. "Show Jonah to the onboard lab. Our centrifuge down here is on the fritz. If he can spin out his own samples, that'll speed things up considerably."

"Aye-aye, Dr. F," Tom said, and he pulled at the sleeve of Jonah's jumpsuit. "C'mon. We were under strict orders to keep Jonah Prime out of the lab."

"Prime?" Jonah sounded offended. "What if I'm Jonah Prime and your Jonah is the alternate?"

"You're in our universe now, buster," Crow said. "Although I'd call you a new and improved Jonah. Sometimes the original is worse." Gypsum hit the button to disconnect, and Kinga looked at Max with a hard to decipher expression.

"This is weird," she said. He cracked a smile.

"It is," he agreed. "But you like weird."

"That's true."

"This version of Jonah seems like an all right sort of guy."

"I want to help him," Kinga said. "I mean, I have to come up with something to neutralize the threat this virus represents, but that's my job. I genuinely want to help this guy beyond the greater good, though."

"Don't get all twitterpated," Max said. "I've seen you do this before."

"What? No you haven't."

"Haven't I? What about Neville?"

"Neville was an extenuating circumstance."

"Uh-huh. What about Brian?"

"Shut up," Kinga said.

"What about--"

" _Shut up_ ," she repeated, and tapped him on the back of the head. "Drop it. I'm not an idiot, okay? I'm not dumb enough to get involved with this beyond the purely professional."

"Uh-huh." Max sounded skeptical, and he probably was right to do so. Kinga did have a really bad habit of pinning her heart to her sleeve around the wrong people, and this was entirely the wrong person, so he was pretty sure she'd do it this time too. "Just don't set yourself up to get hurt again," he said gently. "Cause we can't do the heartbreak bender on the moon."

"I could probably synthesize ethanol if I needed to," she said, and he shook his head and brought up the feed from Cambot following the procession to the SOL laboratory on his computer. Jonah looked a little wobbly on his feet as he came into the room, and the bots sat him down on a wheely chair before they started showing off all the medical technology they used to do their part in the research being carried out on the moon. Their explanations were interrupted several times by Jonah coughing, and each coughing fit lasted a little longer and left him a little more breathless at the end, and every time Kinga’s brow furrowed a little deeper in concern. She let the bots get through their spiel about the lab before she tapped into the speaker system. “Jonah? Can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” he said, looking at Cambot with a weak smile. “I’ve never worked in a medical facility before, but a lot of these things are at least moderately familiar. I think I can manage.”

“Good. First things first, I’m going to need you to put one of the samples Crow took from you in the centrifuge. After it’s spun out, you can just pop it in the spectrometer and the machine will do the rest.”

“Can do,” Jonah said. 

“Tom? Ramp up the vitals monitoring from passive to active.”

“Yeah, good call, he’s looking worse than usual,” Tom said. He didn’t need to be in contact with Jonah to read most of his statistics, but he did produce a finger clip for Jonah to wear to measure oxygen saturation. Jonah clipped it to his pinky and left that finger pointing out while he handled the blood sample, hilariously delicate looking given the solemnity of what he was doing. “Uh, Dr. F… O2 sat’s at 94 percent. Usually he’s around 98.” Jonah broke into another coughing fit as soon as he got the centrifuge set up, and Tom made a distressed sound. “93 percent. And his temp’s at 100.8 degrees.” 

“Shit,” Kinga said succinctly. Max turned to look up at her, waiting for directions, but he could see in her eyes that she didn’t know what to do yet. “Well, Jonah… it looks like the incubation period for the virus is 13 weeks. I’m sorry you’re the one being stuck with the symptoms presenting.”

“Yeah, me too,” Jonah said breathlessly. “Just my luck.”

“Crow, administer acetaminophen and dextromethorphan.”

“A therapeutic dose or a recreational dose?” Crow asked wickedly, and Jonah shook his head.

“Oh no. That’s a trip I’m satisfied only having taken once.” Crow handed him a little plastic cup full of red liquid, and Jonah made a face as he swallowed it. “Ugh. Tastes like red.”

“What does red taste like?” Tom asked. “Professional curiosity, you understand.”

“Uh… sickly sweet and medicinal with a gross aftertaste,” Jonah said. “Sorry, buddy. Robotussin’s not the red taste you want to be associated with.”

“I mean, I am a medic bot,” Tom said philosophically. “It would make sense.”

“Jonah? How do you feel?”

“According to what metric?”

“Be descriptive.”

“Um… the aching is getting worse. It was just my big joints, now it’s all my joints. My head is starting to throb. My chest feels--” He started coughing again and dropped his head into his hands with a sigh. “Like there’s someone sitting on it,” he finished. “And I feel cold, but I’m sweating.” Kinga cut the audio connection to the SOL and frowned at Max.

“This isn’t good.”

“No kidding,” Max said. “We have no idea how quickly this is going to progress. Or whether this is the natural course of the virus or if it was hastened by the universal weirdness.”

“Let’s assume the former, for simplicity’s sake,” she said. “And let’s also assume that if he managed to infect anyone before we brought him in, they’ll be showing about now too.” Max nodded and got up from his chair.

“Here, you keep talking him through it. I’m going to call down to HQ. The CDC needs to know about this.” She nodded and took his chair, looking down at her pale hands on the keyboard and praying she had the time and the luck to do what needed to be done at this point.

“Can you check on the centrifuge?” she asked when she opened the connection again. “It should be just about--” She could hear it beep, and she smiled slightly. “Done.” It had spun Jonah’s blood out into three vials. He held them up in front of Cambot. “That center one, the orange liquid. Crow, can you send that down to me?”

“Sure thing, Dr. F.” Thanks to his long legs, Crow was the fastest bot on the Satellite of Love, and every second counted now that Kinga didn’t know how many more of them she’d get. He left the lab, and she pinged one of the boneheads to pick it up for analysis immediately.

“Now the other two vials…” Jonah held them both up again. “The red one you can discard. Uh, give it to Tom. The yellowish one needs to go into the spectrometer.” As shaky as Jonah looked all over, his hands were steady. She thought he must be a great lab partner, then shook her head to dispel the thought. _Quit it, Kinga_ , she told herself. _When you save his life he still has to go home._ When, not if. No room for doubt in her mind. “Okay. That’s going to take half an hour to run.”

“What should I do?”

“Take care of yourself,” she said gently. “Maybe get something to eat? Gypsum, nutrition protocol delta.”

“Got it,” Gypsum said, snaking out of the lab and down to the kitchen. Tom hovered behind Jonah, one hand on the man’s shoulder.

“O2 holding steady. Temperature 101.1. Think you can stand?” Jonah nodded slowly and got to his feet. “Careful… it’s a long way down,” Tom said.

“Yeah, I’m aware,” Jonah said, as close to dry humor as he could get in this condition. He kept a hand on the wall as he followed Gypsum’s path. Cambot bobbed nervously behind him until Jonah sat down, and then they focused on his face. Kinga bit her lip and tried not to swear aloud. Even that brief walk made Jonah look worse, sweat sheening his face and his glasses slipping down his nose, his breathing audibly labored. He sat down more like falling, took his glasses off, and pillowed his head on his folded arms. “This sucks. This sucks out loud,” he muttered.

“I’m so sorry you have to go through this,” Kinga said, frowning as she studied him. “Jonah Prime deserves to suffer for what he did, but you’re just an innocent bystander in all this.”

“Well, at least--” His breath caught in his throat but didn’t trigger a coughing fit. He lifted his head wearily. “At least I’m helping. If he was here and not cooperative, he’d probably just die.”

“I think his self interest would kick in,” she said. “But I could be wrong. Maybe he would just die.”

“I’m not giving in that easy.”

“Good. Don’t. You deserve to live.”

“Think I will?”

“Absolutely,” she said firmly. “Between the two of us? We got this.” He huffed a soundless laugh and nodded.

“Yeah. No problem. All I have to do is survive.” Gypsum set a tray down on the table in front of him, and he pushed himself up from his slouch. “Thanks, girl.”

“Make sure you drink all of the fluids,” Gypsum told him. “You need the electrolytes.” 

“Okay, mom,” he said, reaching for a bottle of gatorade. “I’ll be honest, the liquid might be all I can handle right now…”

“Whatever you can manage is better than nothing at all,” Kinga said. “You don’t even have to go back to the lab, the spectrometer will send the results down automatically. If you want to go lie down, the bots can handle everything else that needs doing.”

“No. If I go horizontal I doubt I’ll make it vertical again. I’d like to put that off as long as possible.” He took slow, measured sips from the bottle, then screwed it shut and held the bottle to his forehead.

“Oh, honey, no. Here.” Gypsum produced a fabric covered ice pack for him. “Put that on the back of your neck, it’ll help.”

“Tom? Status update?” 

“O2 at 92, temp climbing slowly at 101.2.” Kinga propped her head on her hands and watched Jonah silently. “Maybe you should unsnap your jumpsuit, buddy. Those long sleeves aren’t doing you any favors right now.”

“Huh… yeah, good idea.” He popped the snaps down to his waist and shrugged out of the sleeves. Under the jumpsuit his white t-shirt was soaked with sweat, and he pulled the collar away from his neck with a grimace. “God, I don’t even think I felt this bad when I had appendicitis.”

“Is that the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?” Kinga asked. Jonah looked at Cambot and Kinga shivered at the feverish intensity in his eyes.

“No. The worst thing that ever happened to me was falling into other Kinga’s trap. But that was the worst thing medically.” The computer pinged and Kinga opened the message. Terry had finished analysis of the serum; the viral load in Jonah’s bloodstream had exploded exponentially overnight. The silver lining to that very heavy storm cloud was that there were enough antibodies in that sample to engineer a retroviral-- only a single dose, but that was all they’d need to save Jonah’s life. However, they’d need more of it if Jonah Prime had managed to infect anyone down on Earth…

“Where’s Crow?” she asked, tapping her voice into every speaker on the SOL. “Crow, we need you in the kitchen.” A few moments later the golden bot made his appearance, hesitating obviously in the doorway.

“What’s up, Dr. F?”

“I need a pint of Jonah’s blood. Sorry, Jonah.” Jonah made a quiet whimpery noise and let his head fall to the tabletop, but he obediently stuck out his left arm. “Don’t worry, Crow’s very good at this.”

“Hey, I give blood regularly. Or I did. No big deal.” He didn’t look up as Crow tourniqueted his arm, and he didn’t make a sound when the needle pierced his skin. “I speed bleed, too. You’ll have a pint posthaste.”

“Do you need anything besides the pint while I have the needle in?” Crow asked.

“No, that should do it.” She bit her lip for a second. “Jonah? Is there anything I can do to help you from down here besides the cure, which is being worked on now?”

“It is?” He lifted his head but didn’t push his glasses up, staring over the frames into Cambot’s lens. “That’s… that’s good. I’m, um…” He didn’t need to hesitate for her to read the fear in his eyes. “You’re sure it’ll be ready soon enough?”

“Today is not the day you die, Jonah Heston.” He shuddered slightly.

“That’s not the first time I’ve heard those words in your voice. First time it hasn’t been a threat, though.”

“The last thing I want to do is threaten you.”

“That’s kind of you.” 

“You deserve a little kindness, from what you’ve said. Even more of it, from what I’ve seen you go through today.” His lips quirked up in a pale attempt at a smile, and Kinga’s nails bit into her palms, trying to ground herself with the pain instead of getting lost in the dawning hope in his eyes. “I wish I could keep you here,” she said, and immediately winced. _For fuck’s sake, girl…_ At least he couldn’t see her. She was just a voice coming through the speakers for him.

“No, this is where I don’t want to be,” Jonah said.

“Not the satellite. Here. In this universe. I think your douche counterpart deserves to be tortured with shitty movies. You don’t deserve that.”

“Well… thank you.” He seemed taken aback. “I… kind of wish I could stay, if going back to that is my other option.”

“It’s out of our hands though.”

“Well, if other me is as horrible as you say he is, I doubt he’ll be trying to get back to this universe and a dying body.”

“That’s a pint,” Crow said. “You want this sent right down, Dr. F?”

“Sooner than soonest,” she said. “Tom? Update?”

“O2 89 percent, temperature 101.7.”

“Point _seven_?” She couldn’t keep the horror out of her voice. A half degree spike in fifteen minutes was the worst kind of news. “Jonah. Can you stand?”

“Mm… even odds on whether that’s possible,” he mumbled. “Do I need to?”

“Yeah, honey, I’m afraid you do. Gypsum, help him to the bathroom. I’m afraid his temperature’s going to go through the roof if we don’t get him into cool water.”

“Cold shower. Great. Just what this day needs.” He managed to get to his feet, and Gypsum coiled herself around him to help him stay upright.

“C’mon, Jonah. You’ll feel better.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said, bumping his glasses up where they’d been about to fall off his nose. “But I’ll do it anyways.”

“You’re such a trooper,” Kinga said. “The retroviral’s processing now. As soon as it’s done it’s going up to you. I promise, it’s going to stop sucking soon. But it’s gonna suck for a little while longer first.”

“Promise?” He let out one of those soundless huffed laughs. “A promise from Kinga Forrester. Never thought one of those would be worth the air it was said with.”

“Am I really that bad where you’re from?”

“Well…” He put a hand on the wall as they made their way down the hallway, letting his eyes close and trusting Gypsum to guide him. “Evil you is kind of… mostly harmless evil. Even her idea of torture isn’t actual physical torture. But apparently evil me wanted to spread a pandemic. So I’d say that as bad as evil you is, apparently I’ve got more of a capacity for evil in me.”

“That’s not a fair assessment,” she said. “Just because one version of you turned out evil doesn’t mean every version of you has the same capacity for evil.”

“No? You don’t believe every version of you started from the same place?”

“Probably not,” Kinga said. “There’s probably a version of me that didn’t have two loving dads and a brother.”

“You have a brother?”

“Yeah? You saw him. Max is my brother.”

“Wait, _what_?” That was enough of a surprise to get Jonah to open his eyes. “You what now?”

“Yeah, our dads were stranded on the Satellite of Love together for years. When they escaped they decided to start a family together. We have different parents but we’re still siblings.”

“That _definitely_ didn’t happen in my universe.”

“Well, you recognized Max, so he’s there in your universe…”

“Yeah, he’s pathetically in love with you and you treat him like dirt.” Kinga sputtered for a second before bursting out into laughter. 

“Oh my god. No. You live in the darkest timeline. That’s so _sad_... I don’t know what I’d do without a brother, our whole careers are built around how well we work together.”

“He’s basically your henchman.”

“He would spit nails if he heard you say that,” she laughed. “Oh, wow. So our dads didn’t….?”

“They ran the experiments in my universe. They weren’t the ones on the Satellite.”

“How fucking bleak,” she said. “That’s awful. Thinking of my poor naive father as a villain… ugh. He’d be so bad at it.”

“He was,” Jonah said with a hint of a smile. “You’re pretty bad at it too.”

“That just proves I’m meant to be a good guy,” she said. “We’re rare enough in this universe, I don’t think it could afford to lose me.”

“I’m glad you’re a good person here,” he said softly. “But, uh… I’m gonna ask Cambot to stay out in the hall now?”

“Oh… yeah, of course, your privacy is--”

“I’m just going to look really pathetic in a cold shower and I’d like to retain whatever shred of dignity I still have after being carried through the SOL by Gypsum.”

“You’re not undignified. You’re carrying yourself remarkably well all things considered. I’m going to go down to the lab and check on the retroviral. You stay in the shower ten minutes or as long as you can stand it, okay? Tom, push his vitals to me via text. If this doesn’t help…”

“Catch you on the flip side,” Jonah said, and went into the bathroom still wrapped in Gypsum’s coils. She sighed and cut the connection, and heard a low whistle behind her.

“Well that’s kind of nuts,” Max said. “Me being madly in love with you? Gross.”

“Shut up, dork,” she said, turning around to find him looking very amused. “What’d the CDC say?”

“Basically to do everything you’re already doing and to get back to them right away after administering the retroviral serum to Jonah. Terry says it’s about 20 minutes from ready.” Max studied Kinga for a second and then his eyes widened. “Oh no. Whatever you’re about to say, don’t say it.”

“I want to keep him,” she said in a rush, and Max sighed.

“He’s not a stray puppy, Kinga! You can’t just adopt someone from another universe!”

“I don’t want to _adopt_ him.” Max rolled his eyes. 

“Kinga. Seriously. What did I tell you.”

“Not to set myself up to get hurt again,” she said sullenly.

“And what are you doing?”

“Exactly what you said not to,” she sighed.

“You probably can’t keep him,” Max said gently. “It’s not a choice you get to make. That’s all under the control of our evil versions. And expecting anything good to come from that is just stupid.”

“What if evil me likes evil him as much as I like him?”

“Are you willing to risk your heart on that?”

“It’s not a choice I get to make,” she said. “It’s happened already. I can’t undo it.”

“Kinga Clayton Forrester, I swear to god you make everything so much harder for yourself than it ever needs to be.”

“Everything is already hard for me,” she snapped. “I might as well make it harder.” He sighed again and pulled her into a hug.

“You don’t need to,” he said. “I try to make it easier for you. But this… this is all you.”

“You think I’m an idiot.”

“Absolutely not,” he said. “You’re the smartest person I know. But you set yourself up for heartbreak like a complete fool.”

“Stop mocking me and help me figure out how to make this work, then.”

“You’re lucky you’re my favorite sister.”

“I’m also your least favorite sister.”

“Yeah, that’s also true.” He squeezed her and let her go. “Come on, Terry wanted your eyes on the retroviral serum before it finished cooking. It’s your brainchild, you should see it take form.”

The lab was a hive of activity. Terry and his crew were focused on the first dose of the retroviral, but Crow had sent down that pint of Jonah’s blood and everyone who wasn’t working on batch one was working on batch two. When Kinga walked over, Terry stood up and waved her toward the microscope.

“Check this out. It’s absolutely nuts.” She peered through the viewer. He replaced the slide with a drop of Jonah’s blood. “Okay, so check out the viral load there. Way too high, right? Watch this.” He added a drop from a pipette. Kinga gasped. As the serum spread throughout the blood, the viruses… just fell apart like they’d been unraveled. “Boom goes the dynamite.”

“Oh my god.” Her hand gripped the edge of the desk hard. “This-- is it ready?”

“It’s being loaded into a syringe as we speak. You should be the one to send it up, you’re the one who figured out how to do it.”

“I want to take it up myself,” she said.

“ _No._ Absolutely fucking not,” Max said immediately. “That’s what the bots are for. You’re not going anywhere near him until we know he’s not infectious.” She glared at him, and he stared back at her. “I’m not letting my little sister in the same room as a bioweapon until we know for sure that we can cure it. I know this is your project but I’ll handcuff you to your desk if I have to. You are comprehensively, categorically not allowed to administer this retroviral serum with your own hands.” They stayed locked in a staring match for a good fifteen seconds before she sighed and closed her eyes.

“Yes. Fine. You’re being logical. I’m the one being irrational.”

“Oh, shit. We didn’t cure it. This is the apocalypse. Kinga’s admitting she’s irrational. The sun will be swallowed by Fenris Wolf.” She punched Max hard in the arm but it didn’t get the satisfying yelp she was hoping for. “C’mon. Time to be a heroine.” She watched as Terry packed the syringe in a hard case lined with foam-- the same way they sent anything up to the SOL, safe for sure, but her heart was in her throat anyways as she carried the case through the lab and up to where the connection to the SOL was. 

“Satellite crew, do you read me?” she asked as she established the connection. Cambot was staring at Crow when it linked, and Crow raised a claw in acknowledgement.

“What’s the good word, Doc?”

“Prepare for incoming shipment. One syringe of retroviral. Where’s Jonah?” Crow’s eyes darted to one side and he reached out to catch Cambot before they could turn.

“He’s lying down,” Crow said. “He couldn’t keep his feet in the shower. His temperature’s not climbing any more, but he’s… not in good shape.”

“Then get this into him as soon as possible,” she said, and sent the case up. “Can I see him?” Crow’s eyes shifted again and he let go of Cambot, who turned to capture the scene: Jonah stretched out in the hammock, one arm dangling off the side, Tom tucking a sheet around his waist hastily. His breathing was labored and all of his skin was unhealthily flushed. He was utterly helpless and Kinga wanted nothing more than to pet his hair and promise him that she’d save him. She heard a clatter indicating that Crow was hauling ass to fetch the medicine and tried not to chew on her own hand with nervous energy. “Jonah? Can you hear me?” He lifted his head. “No, no, lie down, you can’t see me anyways. The cure is coming. I promised I’d save you.”

“You did,” he said faintly. “Are you keeping your promise?”

“I really fucking hope so. I’m pretty sure. But I don’t know what it’s going to feel like… it might hurt a lot.”

“I’ll take temporary pain over permanent death.”

“You’re being really brave.”

“Brave? Nah. My options are die or don’t die. That’s not brave.” He coughed, a deep racking cough that shook his whole lanky frame, and swore as he caught his breath. He turned his hand toward Cambot to reveal blood on his palm. “Maybe hurry though…” The clatter of Crow approaching heralded the golden bot’s arrival, and he wasted no time, setting the case right on Jonah’s stomach to open it and extract the syringe.

“You ready for this, big guy?” Crow asked, and Jonah managed to raise his arm from where it dangled off the hammock with obvious effort. Crow caught his arm to steady it and sank the syringe into the bend of Jonah’s elbow. Kinga’s breath caught in her throat as she watched the golden serum disappear into Jonah’s vein, and then Crow pulled the syringe away and set it back in the case, moving the case to the floor. For a long second, no one moved-- and then Jonah shoved his fist in his mouth and bit down on it, trying not to scream. 

“Tom! Vitals!”

“Heart rate spiking-- 120 bpm and rising-- blood pressure spiking--” He wasn’t screaming, but the distressed sounds Jonah made were like knives twisting in Kinga’s gut. “O2 level rising, 94 percent. Heart rate leveling at 138 bpm. Blood pressure 184 over 122. Temperature 100.5 degrees.” 

High, but not critical. Kinga didn’t realize she was biting her own hand in the same way until her teeth let go, dark red marks on her knuckles. “You’re going to be okay, Jonah,” she said as reassuringly as she could. “I promise, you’re going to be okay.” Jonah made another pained sound-- and fell silent, his hand falling off the side of the hammock again. “ _Tom_?!”

“He passed out,” Tom said. “But that’s a good thing, I think. Vital signs are stabilizing. It’s better for this to work through his system when he can’t register the pain.”

“Yeah… yes. Good point.” Kinga felt dizzy, but the moment she swayed Max was at her back holding her up. “He needs to be okay,” she breathed, and Max lead her over to a chair and sat her down.

“He’ll be okay,” he told her. “You figured it out, right? You’re a genius. Of course he’ll be okay.” He patted her back gently. “Deep breaths. Everything’s fine.”

“Everything’s not fine,” she cried, covering her face with both hands. “Everything is not fine. I’m going to lose him, aren’t I?”

“Not today,” Max said. “Look, Kinga-- our Jonah had to know, right? The incubation period? He had to have known how long it was.” She nodded. “So he knew his time was up.” She lowered her hands slightly, tearful green eyes looking up at him. “He thought he was a dead man. He’s not coming back.”

“Weren’t you the one who told me I can’t count on that?”

“I think you can count on our universe’s Jonah’s self-interest. He has no reason to come back.” She lowered her hands all the way and Max cupped her cheek. “Don’t lose hope,” he said gently. “Sometimes… sometimes the universe works out for the best.”

“Universes,” she said.

“Right.”

“Are you just telling me what I want to hear?”

“When’s the last time I lied to you?” She blinked a couple of times and the hint of a smile lifted her lips, and he nodded. “Exactly. Trust me.” She nodded back at him. “You might want to direct the bots,” he suggested, and she sat up straight, appalled that the bots heard her emotional reaction. Crow was deliberately looking away and humming what might have been the old jazz standard “Fever”, Tom was off camera, and Cambot… bless their digital heart… was keeping a weather eye on Jonah, whose hectic flush was already starting to fade.

“Bots?” Crow looked up, Tom came back into view. “Where’s Gypsum?” 

“She said something about solar radiation,” Crow said. “Pretty sure she’s busy.” Kinga swallowed, trying not to feel nervous about that.

“Monitor him constantly. Crow, I know we’ve tapped the poor guy’s veins too much today, but we need a blood draw one hour from the time of injection.”

“He’ll survive,” Crow said cheerfully. “What’s a little blood between friends anyways?” His eyes shifted and he added slyly, “Is he your friend?”

“He’s my patient,” Kinga said stiffly, and Crow clicked his beak in amusement.

“Whatever you say, Dr. F.” Max leaned down behind her to murmur in her ear.

“You’re going to sit here and watch him until he wakes up, aren’t you.” She nodded, and he patted her shoulder. “I’m going back to the lab. The boneheads deserve to know that we succeeded.”

“Tell them I’m proud of all of them,” she said, and looked up and back to meet his eyes. “And I’m proud of you.”

“It wouldn’t have worked without every one of us,” Max said. “I’m proud of you too.” He went off to deliver the good news, and Kinga leaned back in her chair and felt her heart slowly go back to its usual beat… no. Not its usual beat. Close to it, but what she felt was so far from usual. She wondered if this was the beat before heartbreak or if… maybe… this could be her new normal.

An hour later, Jonah was still unconscious, but he twitched when Crow stuck him with yet another needle and made a whiny, still mostly asleep sound. “Wha?”

“Hold still,” Crow said. “Almost done.” As soon as he had a vial full of blood, he ran off to go stick it in the centrifuge. Jonah blinked his eyes open blearily and groaned.

“I feel like I’ve been hit by a semi truck,” he mumbled. 

“But you’re alive,” Kinga said. At the sound of her voice he startled and sat up slightly. “I’m sorry you feel like crap.”

“Still an improvement on how I felt before the injection,” he said. “Where are you? And where are my glasses?”

“I’m on the moon, and I don’t know. You can settle back down, you can’t see me anyways.”

“This is kind of bullshit, you know,” he said. “You can see me all the time and I only get the sound of your voice.”

“What, is it not mellifluous enough for your taste?”

“Your voice is beautiful. It suits you. I just wish I could see you back.”

“Give it a little time,” she said. “As soon as the viral load is undetectable, I’m bringing you down from the SOL.”

“You… what?”

“You were being quarantined because you were infectious. If you’re no longer infectious, you no longer need to be quarantined.”

“I… I can be around people?”

“You can be around me,” she said softly, and he grinned. “Jonah… can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Do you think it’s likely that evil Jonah would just leave you here to die in his body?”

“I would be astonished if that weren’t the case. I bet he’s hit it off with the Mads. They’re probably already scheming some horrible shit together.”

“So… you’re probably stuck here.”

“Whoa, wait a second.” He looked right at Cambot intently. “Stuck is not the word. I am _thrilled_ to be here. If I’m lucky enough to get to stay… that would be fantastic.”

“You’re happy to be here?”

“Kinga, honest to god, a day of being horribly ill and in agonizing pain is a small price to pay for my freedom. But you’re going to have to help me convince people I’m not a bioterrorist.”

“I’ll figure something out,” she promised.

The sample Crow took showed a 78 percent decrease in viral load. The same test run three hours later revealed not a trace of the virus left in Jonah’s bloodstream. Max refused to let Kinga be the one to greet Jonah.

“You’re going to throw yourself at him,” Max said. “He needs to go through decontamination before you touch him. You’ll get to him soon enough, okay? I just need to make sure it’s safe for you.”

“Overprotective,” Kinga said, and he smirked at her.

“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve saved your life where you tried to rush into something, squirt.” She wrinkled her nose at him, knowing he was right, and waited on the other side of the decontamination chamber, practically biting her lower lip chapped with impatience.

When the door swung open, she was practically trembling from the effort it took not to rush forward. Jonah stepped out, looking somewhere between thrilled and terrified, and when his eyes met hers he grinned at her.

“You did it,” he said. “You saved me. You’re my personal heroine.”

“You want to know something?” She forced herself not to run at him, taking measured steps, not realizing how much it looked to him like she was stalking him like prey. “I’m glad it was you I saved. Because if it had been the other Jonah, it wouldn’t have felt like this much of a victory.”

“I’m probably more grateful than he would have been…” He bit his lip and held out his arms hopefully, and she flung herself into his grasp and yelped when he picked her up. “Thank you,” he breathed into her hair. “Thank you so much, Kinga.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist, astonished by how much bigger he was in real life than he ever seemed through a view screen, and they stared at each other with ridiculously delighted expressions before she leaned in to kiss him.

She didn’t entirely believe that she would get to keep him until the solar storm died down. It didn’t really sink in that yes, he was hers, until they were on their way back to Earth, holding hands like lovesick teenagers on the shuttle ride down. Until they breathed in fresh air, she was still terrified that he’d be taken away from her by a cruel and uncaring multiverse, but watching him tip his head back under summer sunlight and fill his lungs with non-recycled air she felt something solidify, strong and almost tangible where her fears had been. She slipped her hand into his and gave him a tug.

“Come on,” she said. “I’m taking you home.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Fever When You Kiss Me, Fever When You Hold Me Tight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12120147) by [speccygeekgrrl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl)




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